Your next celebrity crush: Maika Monroe

By Chris Serico

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July 18, 2016 10:35 PM EDT

Anyone can crush on Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, but Circa knows there's a next generation of talent ready to embrace America's collective admiration. In that spirit, your next celebrity crush just might be Maika Monroe.

Even if she's not quite a household name yet, she should be. Twitter's already got the feels.

Before she became one of Hollywood's fastest rising stars, her career almost took a very different turn.

At age 13, her father taught her kiteboarding: surfing while holding onto a trapeze handle attached to a kite.

"I fell in love with it and started traveling around the world, started getting better and better," she told MTV News for a story published in May. "I was acting a little bit at the time but it just wasn't working out or coming together. For me, kiteboarding was in my control. You see progress, you train, you get better. In a sense, you have control of the outcome. Acting is completely out of your hands."

At age 17, she committed to more serious training with a move to the Dominican Republic.

But after only a few months abroad, she got her first big break: co-starring with Zac Efron in "At Any Price."

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Monroe's subsequent work, including her lead role in the critically acclaimed "It Follows," proved she wasn't just a pretty face. More film work ("The Bling Ring," "Labor Day" and "The 5th Wave") followed.

Her role in this summer's highly anticipated "Independence Day: Resurgence" might just turn her into a superstar.

In the sequel to the 1996 alien-invasion blockbuster, Monroe plays Patricia Whitmore, the daughter of former President Thomas J. Whitmore (Bill Pullman).

As of June 2016, more than 60,000 fans were following Monroe's upbeat Instagram account.

Not including the "Independence Day" sequel, she's slated to appear in six more films this year and next: "The Tribes of Palos Verdes," "Hot Summer Nights," "Bokeh," "The Scent of Rain & Lightning," "I'm Not Here" and "Felt."

Co-starring with Jennifer Garner in "The Tribes of Palos Verdes," Monroe's character finds solace in a surf community.